His Favorite Nephew
by Cisselah
Summary: He was six the first time he met his dead uncle. "You can call me Forge. Uncle Forge. Or Insanely Hot Bastard if you feel like it"


_**~*His Favorite Nephew*~**_

_**written by: Cisselah**_

_**(Beater 2)**_

_**written for**__ Cearphilly Catapults** in **The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition_

_**Prompts: 14 & 5**_

_**~*-.-*~**_

He was six the first time he met his dead uncle. Not that he knew that it was his uncle, or that the man was dead for that matter. No, to Freddy, the strange man with the blown off face was just another one of the many Weasleys that ran around the Burrow at Christmas Eve, trying frantically to get the last cup of eggnog and at the same time stop one their children from wrecking the place. Sure, the mysterious Weasley stranger happened to be missing half his face, but the stranger was a grown-up and sometimes grow-ups did strange things. It wasn't until a large shadow loomed over Freddy that the six-year-old glanced up from his spot behind the couch, opening his mouth to tell his little sister for the _fourth _time this evening to _bugger off._

It wasn't his little sister.

It was the strange man with the blow off face that was standing above him, grinning down at the six-year-old below with a smile that showed off all his bloodstained teeth.

"What are you looking at!?" Freddy scowled at the strange man, reaching down to cup his hands protectively over his new invention. "You looking to get beaten up?"

The strange man's grin grew even larger, although Freddy had no idea why. When his daddy had told that strange man in Diagon Alley the same thing, the wizard had nearly pissed himself and fled down the street like a pack of werewolves were after him.

The strange man snickered. "That's the spirit" He grinned brightly like he'd just said the funniest thing ever. "Really scary. Very convincing. Ever thought of becoming an Auror?"

Freddy snorted.

"Are you crazy?" He demanded to know. "Aurors suck! I'm gonna be a prankster like my daddy" He sniffled in the arrogant way only a child can have. "I'm gonna be the _best _prankster ever"

The strange man grinned again, as if he'd said something really funny nobody but the strange man seemed to get.

"Is that so, mini-me?" The strange man asked, still grinning like a madman.

"Yes" Freddy said defensively. "And who are you calling mini-me, Krueger?"

The strange man looked impressed. "You know your movies" He tilted his head to left, looking down at Freddy like Freddy was a particularly interesting specimen under a microscope. "Does your mom know you watch scary movies when she's not home?"

"How do you know I don't watch them when she's home?"

"Touché, mini-me, touché..."

Freddy scowled, turning back to his invention as he ignored the strange man and his foreign words. Freddy's cousins Victoire and Dominique and Louis enjoyed speaking french-flanch-blah-blah-blah when nobody else understood, and Freddy hated it. Just this summer he'd have to endure three weeks of being laughed at in another language just because his mommy had decided that Aunty Phlegm must be very lonely in French-land and if the strange man insisted on doing the same, Freddy was going to pretend he didn't exist like all the other grown-ups did.

The strange man leaned forward, scrutinizing Freddy's lump of green goo with a critical eye.

"You should add a sprinkle of crushed Puking Pastilles" he said after a while. "Makes the slime spew in every directions instead of just one"

"Bugger off" Freddy told him, but he still added the crushed Puking Pastilles, just to be on the safe side.

"You've got a nasty mouth for such a small, little squirt" The strange man grinned. "I like you"

"Well, go and like me somewhere else. I'm trying to do something important here" The last phrase always worked with his sister, but the strange man just grinned and crouched down to get a better look at the goo (which seemed to slowly be turning brown).

"If you add some water, that should stabilize it" He advised Freddy.

Scowling fiercely, Freddy stood up and headed towards the bathroom - narrowly missing a screaming Lily Potter and her running brother. He borrowed one of the cups from the sink and poured up some water from the tap. It took longer than he expected, because he had to stand on his toes to reach, but by the time he returned the strange man hadn't moved an inch from his position. As soon as he poured the water on the green-soon-to-be-brown lump of goo it returned to its screaming neon-green color in a matter of seconds.

"It worked!" Freddy said in surprise. The stranger snorted.

"Of course it worked, mini-me. I'm your Uncle Freddy, not your Uncle Perce" He said.

"No, you're not" Freddy told him matter-of-factly.

"I'm not?"

"Nope. _I'm_ Freddy, which means _you _can't be Freddy. There can't be two Freddys, so you have to be someone else!"

"But I was Freddy first"

"But I'm Freddy now! Find another name. Freddy's mine!"

The stranger looked at him silently for a moment. His eyes were big and brown and sad like Freddy's daddy's got sometimes when he thought no one was looking. Maybe it was the red hair, or maybe it was the way he looked at Freddy, but for a moment Freddy was almost convinced it was his father crouching down in front of him, wearing some kind of red paint and looking considerably younger than he used to. But Freddy's daddy only had one ear - and he certainly didn't have half his face repainted in red - and the moment passed as quickly as it came.

"You can call me Forge" The stranger said with a bright grin, his eyes sparkling with mischief, the sad look forgotten. "Uncle Forge. Or Insanely Handsome Bastard if you feel like it"

Uncle Forge turned out to be a genius when it came to inventions. He knew just which amount of which substance to use to make the poor green go into something brand-new and terrible and absolutely amazing (that would later be added to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes under the name _Vicious Vomiting Weasel_, a product that would terrorize parents and teachers for generations to come). Uncle Forge also turned out to have no empathy at all when it came to the other grown-ups that were frequenting the Burrow during the holidays, and no qualms about laughing hysterically at the sight of Freddy's Uncle Percy standing on the kitchen table at four am in the morning, screaming hysterically at his father while wearing only his boxers and a delightful array of different shades of vomit.

Uncle Forge, Freddy quickly came to realize, was the best Uncle ever.

~*-.-*~

Freddy turned ten the year he realized that no one else in the family could see his favorite uncle. Of course, he'd always known that the family preferred to ignore Uncle Forge's existence, but he'd never actually thought that they ignored him because they didn't _notice _him. In Freddy's mind, Uncle Forge was too bright, too wild and way too tricky to ever miss. The man sat hours at the dinner table making farting noises just to get Freddy to snicker at the wrong time and spent what seemed to be an eternity making sure Freddy knew exactly which chairs to drop the dungbombs (Aunt Muriel's were a favorite).

Uncle Forge was just always there. Laughing, grinning and making indecent jokes during Freddy's least favorite uncle's (Uncle Percy) long speeches.

So okay, Uncle Forge looked a bit icky and ouchy, but Freddy had always just assumed that was the unfortunate side effect of some curse, like his Aunt Hermione's hair. And yeah, maybe Grandma Weasley never told him to get his dirty feet off her table, or maybe he wore the same bloodstained, dusty robes as always, but that was just Uncle Forge.

And it wasn't like Freddy never mentioned him. Freddy always talked about him. _Uncle Forge told me to set that dungbomb off. Uncle Forge told me to spice the punch with the funny juice. Uncle Forge told me to turn Roxy's teddybear into a spider. But Mooooom... Uncle Forge told me to do it! _

The day Freddy had his epiphany started off as normal. He and Uncle Forge had invented a funny new powder they called 'Screaming Small Sisters' and spent most of the morning perfecting it. The name was a work in progress, because Roxy was crying more than she was screaming, but 'Crying Small Sisters' was just not as catchy. After being grounded for the fourth month in a row (His mother was a Voldemort sometimes), Uncle Forge had taken him outside to cheer him up with some small fireworks.

It was then everything went wrong.

The name of the problem?

_Roxy._

His annoying, scrawny, idiotic little sister, who couldn't just leave him alone for one minute. She was always there, chattering and giggling and skipping around like some kind of weird muggle bunny, looking at him with big blue eyes that shone with awe. She tagged after him like chewing gum under a shoe and this day was no different than the others.

"Mom says you're not allowed to blow things up"

"I'm not blowing anything up. I'm setting off fireworks - there's a difference!"

"What's the difference?"

"Too complicated for little squirts like you to understand. Piss off, Roxy"

"You're mean to me! Mom says you can't be mean!"

When Freddy grew up and had his own family, he'd make sure not to buy any little sisters. He wasn't going to be that cruel - little sisters were the work of the devil.

"Go away, you little rat!"

"I'm not a rat!"

"GO AND PLAY WITH MATCHES, ROXY! NOBODY WANTS YOU HERE ANYWAY!"

"AT LEAST I CAN TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REAL AND NOT! YOU STILL BELIEVE IN IMAGINARY FRIENDS"

"NO, I DON'T!"

"YES, YOU DO!"

"NO, I DON'T!"

"YES YOU DO! YOU STILL BELIEVE IN UNCLE FORGE, RIGHT!" She grinned triumphantly and he stood there, flabbergasted and confused, wondering if his annoying little sister had finally lost it.

"What are you talking about? Uncle Forge isn't an imaginary friend! Uncle Forge is real! He's standing right there! Look!" Freddy waved madly at the spot where his Uncle stood, seemingly immersed in the sight of his dirty fingernails and currently ignoring the children that fought over his existence.

Roxy stomped her foot, her mane of brown-red hair falling over her shoulders in a tangled mess as she glared up at her big brother.

"There's no one there!" Roxy said. "Because there is no Uncle Forge! There never was! Mommy says you're making him up!"

"He's here! He's right here! Look! Look, if you don't believe me!" Freddy insisted, his palms growing sweaty and his stomach being to turn because Uncle Forge was not saying anything, wasn't insisting that he was right there or that of course he was real.

"He's real!" Freddy nearly screamed. "He's real! You're real! Tell her! Tell her Uncle Forge! Tell her you're real!"

But he didn't. His Uncle just looked away as if he couldn't stand looking Freddy in the face and suddenly Freddy felt sick. His eyes darted from his not-really-real-Uncle to his triumphant sister and then back again and back again and back...

Freddy turned and walked away.

~*-.-*~

"Courage without conscience is a wild beast", was one of Aunt Hermione's favorite quotes - which meant the Weasley-Potter children heard it on a far more regular basis than any of them were comfortable with.

Freddy didn't know who'd said it - and if he ever met the guy he was likely to strangle the man - but the phrase had been repeated so many times by his Aunt that the Weasley-Potter clan had dubbed it hers.

_You didn't do the dishes when you should have -_ again?_ Think about what your Aunt Hermione always says._

_You put Intamable Ick in your sister's hair - _again? _What would your Aunt Hermione say?_

_You ended up in a Ministry holding cell -_ again!_ Conscience, Freddy! This is exactly what your Aunt Hermione is always talking about!_

Blah. Blah. Blah.

And think of the children in Africa.

Freddy had never really considered the meaning of the saying before. Sure, he'd heard the words so many times he could repeat them in his sleep, but he had never really thought about what they meant.

"Courage without conscience is a wild beast".

Freddy had a very spare measure of conscience (there was no little voice telling him what to do from the back of his head) and an overflow of courage (He was a Gryffindor, damn it!).

This was a bad combination.

Fifteen year old Freddy and James were an even worse combination. Pranksters at heart, the two cousins enjoyed making their respective households miserable, and that was reason enough to keep them separated. To their parents despair, it never seemed to work. Freddy and James found each other like two magnets - circling towards each other in a trajectory that made everybody around them collateral damage.

Their selves included.

Until that horrible day on the ice, Freddy had never considered the meaning of those seven unbearable words his Aunt had pounded into their heads when they were kids. Maybe, maybe if he had, he would later reflect, it wouldn't have gone the way it did.

It started with a book. _How to Wrestle a Troll, by Misha Moongoose _to be exact. Where Rose had gotten ahold of it, Freddy had no idea.

Anyway, it started with that goddamn book. Or maybe it started with the shove James gave Rose, the shove that made her trip and her bag spill open and all her heavy, definitely-not-their-year schoolbooks slide out onto the snow. However you chose to start the story, it all ended the same... with Rose balancing alone and cold over the frozen ice of the Black Lake, trying to retrieve her book because her idiot cousin had tried to be funny and thrown it out there.

"I'm gonna kill you Freddy!" She screamed as she bent down to snatch it up from the thin ice and that was the last thing she said before she went through.

"Courage without conscience is a wild beast" Freddy's always Aunt Hermione quoted.

Oh, how right she was.

Courage without conscience is a wild beast, no matter whose courage it was and whose conscience it was that was missing. If Freddy hadn't thrown that blasted book onto the lake that snowing January day or if Rose hadn't been so brave she dared to go out on that thin ice, then none of the events that followed would have come to pass. The ice wouldn't have broken, Rose wouldn't have gone under and Freddy certainly wouldn't have been stupid enough to run out on the ice to help her and ended up in the ice-cold water, looking up at the face of the frantic teachers and gathering crowd from underneath the ice.

It was quite a view though.

Just before he started to black out of the lack of air, a strong pair of strong hands grabbed a hold of his robes, pulled him through the water and up through a hole in the ice. He drew a gasping breath, coughing out what must be a gallon of water, his eyes stinging and his fingers cold as ice. Above him, his Uncle Forge stood tall and proud, wearing robes that were dry and dusty and speckled with blood, busying himself with trying to brush some dirt of his tense shoulders.

Around them the snow whipped down and created a white curtain between the two of them and the rest of the world.

"Not real my ass" Uncle Forge sniffled to himself. "Showed those little buggers, didn't I, dear nephew?"

"You..." Freddy coughed up another handful of water. "You saved me" he continued hoarsely. "You pulled me up from the water"

"Damned right I did" He turned a pair of almond brown eyes towards the fifteen-year-old. "Not that I had any reason to anyway"

"Sorry" Freddy croaked out, still trying to get over the shock that his imaginary Uncle had used his very un-imaginary hands and pulled him from a certain death.

"Sorry? You ignore me for five years and all I get is _sorry? _Teenagers these days! No manners at all" Then his Uncle grinned, as if to say all was forgotten.

Freddy coughed out a laugh, feeling a tiny bit hysterical. Maybe the lack of oxygen had gotten to him after all. Maybe he was hallucinating. Rose once told him... Rose! With a startle, everything rushed back to him. As if he saw what Freddy was thinking, Uncle Forge shook his head.

"My little niece is fine. They pulled her up way before you surfaced, mini-me" He coughed into his sleeve and grinned again. "Anyway, was just stopping by to save your lazy ass. Got to go now, see ya' later!" He turned to leave.

"Wait! You're leaving?" Freddy tried to sit up, but his lungs hurt too much and he gave up. From beyond the curtain he could hear frantic voices coming closer.

"Yep. Can't stick around, might give your folks a good scar, you know. Anyway, take care, kid. I'll check in on you" His Uncle turned to leave, hesitated before he looked over his shoulder one last time with a gentle smile.

"You were always my favorite nephew" He told Freddy and then he was gone.

~*-.-*~

**The End.**


End file.
